


The French Mistake

by Dredfulhapiness



Series: Hello My Old Heart [5]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Iron Dad, Multiverse, it's that episode of SPN okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:20:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23223154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dredfulhapiness/pseuds/Dredfulhapiness
Summary: “I don’t need to sit--” Peter paused. His eyes focused on the poster just beyond the crowd, hung on the wall. Spider-Man, on the side of a building, a title card just below his feet: Spider-Man: Homecoming. The sub-header: Starring Tom Holland.Except Spider-Man wasn’t wearing a mask. It was just Peter.His mouth felt dry. He felt unsteady on his feet. They’d gotten themselves into weird situations before-- space, for example-- but none of them had so clearly exposed Peter’s face. Not with posters, at least. Not with his face in full view.
Series: Hello My Old Heart [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1440634
Comments: 8
Kudos: 93





	The French Mistake

“Fucking Strange,” Tony muttered under his breath. Through his suit, he rubbed at the back of his neck. When they’d been flung through the portal, Peter had just barely managed to avoid impact, but Tony had been thrown back into a wall. 

From where he was laying, all Peter could see was neon green. 

He pulled himself up into a sitting position, coughed. 

“Are you guys alright? You totally missed the mats.” 

Peter blinked and there was someone standing over him, reaching a hand out to both him and Tony. Peter accepted, but he watched Tony wave the hand away and pull himself to his feet on his own. 

They were standing on a soundstage. Or, at least, that’s what it looked like with the camera and sound crew standing around them. 

“Uh.” Peter let his gaze trail over the room. He lifted a foot uncomfortably when he realized he was standing, full-weight, on a wire held to the floor with gaffers tape. 

“Sorry to interrupt,” Tony said, only mildly sincere. “We were hoping to end up somewhere with less…” He looked around, laid his hand flat against the greenscreen wall. “Walls.” 

“Yeah,” Peter agreed. “Sorry about that.” He reached out and sheepishly straightened a light that had been knocked crooked.

A crowd was already starting to form. Peter was already shifting on his feet, anxious to get a move on. Strange was just supposed to get them out of the way for a few seconds (the alternative being an alien spaceship to the face), and every minute they were trapped here was another minute he and Thor were fighting on their own. 

That also meant another minute that  _ Peter  _ wasn’t fighting alongside Thor, which is cool as hell considering he was one of the few Avengers Peter hadn’t fought with or against yet. 

“Jesus, are you two okay? What the hell  _ was  _ that? Some kind of malfunction?” A man muscled his way through the crowd. His eyes were wide-- he was clearly frazzled. 

“No,” Peter said. “Just a portal thing. You know, portal… stuff.” 

The man looked at Peter, squinting. “Did that fall knock the accent out of you?” He asked. 

“Knock the--” Peter started. 

“We’re fine,” Tony said. “Had worse. How do we get out of here without breaking through a wall?” 

The man stared at him, then leaned over to mutter in someone’s-- a PA, maybe? They couldn’t be much older than Peter-- ear, “Call medical. Get them looked at.” 

“Medical?!” Peter yelped. He put his hands up. “No, we’re fine!”

“Tom, we need to get you checked out,” The man said. “That was a bad fall.”

“I’m sorry,” Peter said. “I think you’ve got the wrong guy, I’m not--” He felt a tug on the back of his mask. He reached back, automatic, but it was already unzipped and falling loose. He managed to catch it, his hands frozen around the mask. He stared at the crowd, wide-eyed, but instead of shock, their faces twisted into concern. 

“Fuck,” Someone said, “Your face.”

Tony pointed at the eye on his mask. Peter brought his hand up to near his eye and winced as it pressed against a fresh bruise. His fingers came away bloody. 

“Oh, that’s not from-- not from this,” he said, abruptly aware that he was standing, surrounded by cameras and people, and he wasn’t wearing his mask. “That’s from, from--” He’d taken an alien spear to the eye. His mask was the only thing that had saved him, but it hadn’t kept the edge of the eye guards to puncture just below his eye. It would heal in a few hours. He pressed the mask back to his face in a weak attempt to cover it.

“It wasn’t like that ten minutes ago,” the man from before said. Louder, and to the crowd, “Can someone  _ please  _ grab an ice pack for Tom?” 

Before Peter had another chance to ask who Tom is (and maybe it was best that he didn’t-- if they didn’t know his name, why give it to them?) he turned to Tony. “How about you, Rob? Did you get hurt too?”

Beside him, Peter heard Tony scoff. “Rob?” he asked. “I thought we cleared this up years ago.” He let his own mask fall. 

Peter was hoping they’d be starstruck enough to let him slip away, out of the crowd. Tony could probably get the footage wiped, right? Maybe they could wipe their memories Men-in-Black style. Maybe they could… could… 

If he started freaking out about this now, it would be even harder to get out of it. 

“How hard did you guys hit your heads?” the man-- Peter had to assume he was the director-- asked, clearly concerned. “You should probably sit down.” 

“I don’t need to sit--” Peter paused. His eyes focused on the poster just beyond the crowd, hung on the wall. Spider-Man, on the side of a building, a title card just below his feet:  _ Spider-Man: Homecoming.  _ The sub-header:  _ Starring Tom Holland.  _

Except Spider-Man wasn’t wearing a mask. It was just Peter.

His mouth felt dry. He felt unsteady on his feet. They’d gotten themselves into weird situations before-- space, for example-- but none of them had so clearly exposed Peter’s face. Not with posters, at least. Not with his face in full view.

He was dizzy. Faintly, he could hear Karen’s voice, “Your blood pressure just spiked. Are you in need of medical attention?”

All he could manage was a laugh.

\--

Thankfully, Peter didn’t pass out, and by the time medical staff looked him over, he’d managed to force himself to breathe like a normal person. 

That didn’t stop Tony from watching him, though, cautious, out of the corner of his eye. 

“What’s wrong, kid?” He muttered once everyone else was out of earshot. They’d left them alone with bottles of water while everyone else tried to fix whatever had gone wrong with the apparent stunt. “If they don’t recognize you, they definitely aren’t going to recognize me.” 

Peter tapped his phone against his leg a couple times. Swallowed. “ _ Thrilled by his experience with the Avengers, young Peter Parker returns home to live with his Aunt May. Under the watchful eye of mentor Tony Stark, Parker starts to embrace his newfound identity as Spider-Man,”  _ he read. “ _ He also tries to return to his normal daily routine -- distracted by thoughts of proving himself to be more than just a friendly neighborhood superhero. Peter must soon put his powers to the test when the evil Vulture emerges to threaten everything that he holds dear.” _

“Uh,” Tony said. “Are you writing a memoir over there?” 

“It’s a movie synopsis,” Peter said. Though, it isn’t like he  _ hadn’t  _ considered writing a memoir before. A few times, actually. 

“They made a movie about you before they made a movie about me? Ouch.” 

“You’re in it-- I think they made one about you, too.” Peter held his phone out for Tony to see. “This is the actor playing me. He’s British.”

Tony squinted at the screen. “I can sort of see it,” he said. He held the phone up beside Peter’s face. “He’s a little more handsome, though. He looks more confident.”

Peter snatched the phone from his hand. “They have comics here,” he said, scrolling, “and cartoons, and--  _ oh _ .” 

“What?” Tony moved to look over the top of the phone, but Peter pulled it against his chest. 

“Nothing,” Peter said, and maybe Tony didn’t notice the flush to Peter’s cheeks, or maybe he decided to ignore it, but he didn’t comment. Quickly, Peter turned safe search on. 

“So what is this? An alternate universe?” Tony asked. 

“It’s possible,” Peter said, stuffing his phone back into his pocket. “God-- May is going to kill me if I’m stuck in a different universe. Do you know how lucky I am she forgave me for going to space?”

Tony balked. “Kill  _ you?”  _ he scoffed. “I’m the adult here!” Tony sighed and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Look, I invented time travel, I can figure out a way to get us back home, alright?”

\--

The think tank to invent dimension hopping involved sitting in Tony’s trailer (well, the door said ROBERT, but Peter didn’t want to think too hard about that) as he mourned the loss of his computers and FRIDAY. 

“Didn’t you make Dum-E and the first iron suit without an AI?” Peter asked, munching on a granola bar he’d found in the cabinet. 

“Have you seen how well those work?” Tony countered. “Dum-E almost started a fire trying to make coffee yesterday.”

“So what, then? Am I Tom Holland now? Do I just dress like this?” He motioned down to his outfit-- far more stylish than anything he owned. Far outside the realm of graphic Tees and hoodies. “Do I  _ play golf? _ ” He held out his phone to show off the actor’s Instagram. 

“Relax, no one’s playing golf.” Tony rolled his eyes. “I have my phone, I just have to figure out why this formula isn’t working.” 

Peter peeked over his shoulder, oblivious to the way Tony edged out of the way. His eyes scanned the paper once, then twice. He pointed. “You didn’t move that four,” he said. 

Tony stared at him. “Are you wearing Gucci?” 

Peter pulled a face. “Maybe?”

\--

It took another hour for them to realize how universe hopping works.

“It’s like the  _ Phineas and Ferb  _ movie,” Peter said. Tony blinked. 

He took a long sip of his coffee before finally asking, “It’s like what?”

“Or like-- like  _ Soni _ c!”

“Please don’t cite  _ Sonic  _ as a source.” 

“We have to go through all of the universes to get back to ours.”

“There’s  _ infinite  _ universes,” Tony countered. “Infinite Peter Parkers, infinite Tom Hollands, probably infinite Spider-Men-- it’s impossible to cycle through all of them.”

“We don’t have to cycle through all of them,” Peter said. “We just need to cycle through enough to get back to ours. We don’t know where Strange threw us in the grand scheme of things.”

“Which means we could be one universe away or ten billion,” Tony corrected. “It’s too risky. Something could go wrong. We could get stuck somewhere  _ worse _ .” 

“I play  _ golf  _ here, Mr. Stark,” Peter said. “Tell me how it can get worse.” 

“We’ll figure it out,” Tony said, an edge to his voice. “Just-- sit tight. Alright?”

“What if we  _ don’t _ ?” Peter asked. “Not that I don’t have faith in you, Mr. Stark, but humans have been to space. This is uncharted territory altogeth--”

He turned a second before the knock came. 

“It’s open!” Tony called, throwing a book over the legal pad he’d been writing on. 

A PA popped her head into the trailer. 

“Oh, Hey, Tom. I thought I might find you in here.” She leaned against the doorframe, half in the trailer. “I wanted to let you know you can head home.”

“Uh,” Peter said. “Sorry?” 

Tony nudged him with his foot. Hissed, “ _ you’re British _ ,” under his breath.

Peter cleared his throat. “Why’s that?” and even as he said it he knew the accent was awful. Beside him, Tony grimaced. 

“We can’t shoot anything until your face is feeling better,” the PA explained, pointing at her own eye. Peter put his hand on the bandaid. Right. “We’re going to change the rest of this week to just shooting all the scenes with MJ and Ned. We’ll have you run lines until makeup can cover that.” 

“Sounds great,” Peter said in his horrible accent. “I’ll be heading off, then. Totally leaving to go home. With my… my two dogs. That I have. At home.”

Tony kneed his leg. Peter stopped talking. 

“Thanks so much,” Tony said with a charming smile. “I’ll make sure he gets out of here soon.”

“Great!” she said cheerfully. “Have a great night!”

“You too!” Peter managed, his voice weak. As the door closed he murmured to Tony, “We need to get out of here this accent isn’t going to get any better.”

“I know,” Tony said. 

“If we can’t get out of here, what if we get Strange to bring us back?” 

Tony looked up at him, attentive. 

“I mean, he put us here, even if it  _ was  _ an accident, so he should be able to get us back.”

“The key isn’t to travel,” Tony said, understanding. “It’s to  _ communicate _ .” 

“If we send Strange a message across the universes with our location--”

“We can get him to portal us back!” 

Tony pushed the book off the notepad and began writing, furious. “Give me your watch,” he said after three silent minutes.

“Wh-- my watch?” Peter took it off reluctantly. The face was cracked. He looked at the notes that Tony had scribbled. His face lit up. “ _ Oh, _ ” he said, the realization hitting. 

Once they had a plan, it didn’t take long to rig up the watch using pieces from their suits. 

They worked well together. Quietly. Like a well-oiled machine. Peter handed things over before Tony asked for them. Peter assembled pieces without instruction. Just a formula. 

They sent the message out and neither of them breathed for a minute. Waiting. Outside the trailer, Peter could hear the noises of people wrapping up. Closing set for the night. They were running out of time. At some point it would look weird that they were still crammed in the trailer well after shooting had wrapped for the day. 

If this message didn’t send, they’d have a lot more problems on their hands come closing time.

Peter opened his mouth to say it when he saw the yellow. Where there had been a couch was suddenly manhattan, covered in debris and aliens and--

“Thank fuck,” Tony said, pushing Peter through the portal in front of them.

They landed in the middle of the fight, right after the spaceship crashed where they’d been standing. 

Tony’s suit covered his body. Peter pulled his mask on and wriggled out of the hoodie he’d stolen from his actor-counterpart. 

“What the hell was that, Strange?” Tony demanded, jumping right back into the action and blasting an alien. 

“You weren’t supposed to move,” Strange scoffed. “If you’d stayed still I would have brought you right back.”

“Stayed still?!” Peter yelped. “We were surrounded by people!” 

“Can’t you turn invisible?” Strange asked. Peter ducked, kneed an alien in it’s (presumably) stomach. 

“What?” Peter asked.

“Aren’t you the spider that can turn invisible?”

“N-No?” Peter paused. “There’s a spider that can turn invisible?”

Strange looked at him, head tilted. “There is somewhere-- watch behind you.”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Can Strange travel through universes? Maybe. I don't know. Don't correct me if I'm wrong. 
> 
> I'm taking fic requests on Tumblr, if you want to come talk to me and ask me to write a fic for you @dredfulhapiness OR if you want to just come talk to me for fun. Comments are always appreciated :)


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